Tag: Baby

To Aleksander: Year 1

On By Swarn GillIn Love, Parenting21 Comments

Dear Allie,

I will begin at the beginning.  I write this letter on a Thursday evening a day before your birthday.  It is a Thursday evening that you were born, and it was around this time of 7 pm.  It is both a measure of being more relaxed at a second child being born and also having to care for your older brother that I arrived to see your birth just in the nick of time.  No two births are the same, and yours was proof of that.  No Cesarean, no long wait after labor had been induced, not even enough time for the epidural to kick in on your mother.  I arrived at the hospital and navigated it’s labyrinthine halls to get to the delivery ward, still wondering whether I should have stopped to get that coffee first, figuring it would be a long night.  I waited for a nurse for a few minutes at the nursing station to find out what room your mother was in.  When one finally came she informed me that she was pretty sure my wife was in labor and making a few screams and that I better get down there right away.  I did a somewhat unimpressive jog to the room.  When I opened the door…well it’s hard to describe.  It was a sea of pure femininity.  Numerous nurses stood at the periphery, a doctor stood like a catcher in baseball staring down the birth canal, one nurse on either side holding your mothers legs.  She was screaming in pain, trying to push you out. I stood there somewhat stunned. Quite sure that I was minorly responsible for the present scene due to some past action of mine, but had done little since to earn a place there.  Your mother, was apparently too occupied to notice me, but I assure you I took no offense.  A nurse near the door deftly assumed I was the father and led me through the war zone over to your mother.  Some sort of bloody liquid spurted out of your mother against the doctor’s scrubs.  A nurse stood aside and helped me get a hold of her leg (your mother…not the nurse).  It was at this moment your mother was aware that I was there.  She gave me a glorious smile and all of a sudden she made me feel like I belonged.  She is good at that.  After 3 pushes you came into this world.  I clapped off the dust from my hands, wiped my brow and congratulated myself on a job well done.  Really though your mother was just amazing.  It was beautiful to see, and despite the fact that I saw one life form exit out of another, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.  At the end of it all was you, to hold and love.

For 4 years we had only your brother to love, and the love seemed so overwhelming that I actually wondered if I could feel that kind of love for two children.  It sounds like a silly thing to wonder, but I was worried that it wouldn’t feel the same, that I wouldn’t feel as connected, or that my love wouldn’t grow each day in the same way it did with Dhyan.  You’ll be pleased to know that my worries were unfounded.  It is different, because, well, you’re different, but it’s still intense and it’s still wonderful.  I’ll admit that I don’t get the same thrill in watching your firsts as I did with your brother.  There was certainly a sense of wonder watching a baby grow from birth, and that fascination isn’t quite the same with you.  There was something more academic about it all with your brother, which for me is a thrilling experience, but it somehow all feels more personal with you.  You are a wonder in of itself, because I can tell you look like me in features, but you are this light brown hair and blue eyed version of me which just amazes me.  It’s like watching myself with a blue twinkle in my eye.  It’s surreal.  And I also realized a few months ago that really the biggest part of the sense of wonder I felt with your brother is that I was able to watch him unfold with no basis for comparison.  With you there is.  It’s so easy to compare you to your brother at a particular age, but I realize that’s unfair in many ways.  I vowed on that day to just let you unfold as you are.  No comparisons necessary.  I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job and I hope I can keep it up.  You deserve the freedom to be who you are without the context of your brother.  I don’t need you to be more or less like your brother.  I just need you to be you.

I want you to know that I feel a draw to you that I can’t put my finger on.  I do feel there is more of me in you somehow.  We’ll see how time bears this out.  You have this infectious smile and laugh, and a laid back, easy way about you.  You crawl to me when I come home, even when you mother is home and that’s a pleasant surprise, because your brother was always for mommy only as a baby. 🙂  I feel so close to you already, and your personality is only beginning to show.  I am so anxious to meet you, I just can’t wait to see what surprises you have in store.

My favorite memory of you in this first year, is how attached you are to certain music videos.  You seem fascinated by them, sometimes smiling, but always engaged.  I have such fond memories of you sitting on my lap, sometimes erect and alert and sometimes laid back and cuddly.  You have your favorites and playing a different video from the 13 or so songs you like, usually gets you fidgety and unhappy, but play one you like and you’re quiet as a mouse, content.  I love just having you in my arms while we watch music videos.

You also are fascinated with looking up.  When you were a few months old you were very fascinated looking up at the leaves in the tree.  Now it’s lights, fans, ceilings.  You have this gaze upward that fills your face with fascination, excitement, and wonder.  You love when I spin around holding you in my arms, you look up watching the world spin with you.  I love watching that smile on your face.  I don’t need you to be a meteorologist like me, but I do hope you always like to look up in wonder.

I also am more starkly aware of how long each phase lasts having had your brother and in that way I have come to appreciate each moment more with you.  And since I don’t plan to have any other children, I know these moments won’t come again.  Whether it’s cradling you in my arms, singing you to sleep, or comforting you through the pain of teething, it all feels like something more to savor.  You have just started to walk these last few weeks.  The joy on your face and the sounds you make while doing it just delights me to no end.  Soon that too will pass and you’ll just be walking as if that’s what you always did.  I know from experience that when I sit down and write this letter next year you will be so much more than you are now.  I can’t wait for you to unfold this next year.  I can’t wait for the bloom of spring and the warmth of summer.  I know you are going to love it!  Thank you for being more than I could have hoped for and filling a heart to heights of love I never knew it could reach. Happy Birthday!

To Dhyan: Year 1

On By Swarn GillIn Love, Parenting2 Comments

Dear Dhyan,

I write this letter to you because I know that time changes our memories and feelings about events, and I wanted you to know what I was feeling in the first year of your life.  I also wanted to let you know who I am now, and maybe what I’ve become as a result of you being in my life.

I will begin with the day you were born.  We were at the hospital already.  One of many trips we had taken in the Dhyan_4weeklast couple weeks as your mother’s blood was racing in excitement for you being born.  Well that’s a nicer way of saying she had abnormally high blood pressure and we need to check her health and yours.  We knew that day, which was 3 weeks before your due date, there was a possibility they would want to take you out to make sure she was safe, and that is exactly what ended up happening.  I’ll proudly admit that I was rather calm.  Perhaps because I had to do none of the hard work, but I also have a lot of faith in statistics. Problems with deliveries in our part of the world are rare, and we were at one of the best hospitals in the area with excellent doctors and nurses.  I just knew everything was going to be alright, and I just wanted to make sure that your mother and you were fine and be calm and as in control for her as I could be.  Since all the hard work was your mothers, my panicking would have served little purpose anyways.  As they induced labor on your mother she got contractions quickly, and they started to impact your heart rate and so they decided that a cesarean section was necessary.  They wheeled your mother away and got me suited up so that I was sanitary and when they let me into the operating room they told me to not touch anything covered in blue.  The whole room seemed to be covered in blue and it was frightening obstacle course to get to the small stool next to your mother.  I held her hand and she smiled at me.  There was a large curtain separating the bottom half of your mother from our eyes so I couldn’t tell what they were doing.  Apparently they were making a big slice into your mother and taking you out.  The nurse handed you to me, all swaddled in apparently the same towel design they use in every hospital in the United States.  You were born at 9:59 pm on Dec. 27th, 2014 at 5 pounds 5 ounces, 19 inches long. You were so light and I looked at you and said to myself “So that’s it then?”  But your mom was tearing and she was too drugged up to really hold you.  You were so light and I brought your face close to hers and she smiled and cried at how beautiful you were.  I think it was a different experience for her.  She carried you around for almost 9 months and could feel her body change and feel you grow.  I would say at first I was more like a curious scientist, observing the whole process.  It did not feel like you were my son yet.  I hope that this doesn’t make you sad if you read this someday.  I was emotional because your mom was, but I have to say I didn’t feel like a father yet.

For the rest of that evening I continued to play the scientist as I watched them put you in a little warmer since you were so tiny, and found it humorous that you were under a heat lamp like a burger at a restaurant.  My feeling of being a father wouldn’t come until the next day when you didn’t have to be in the warmer anymore and we had be moved to our post delivery room and you were being fussy and unhappy and I picked you up and you quieted right down and became peaceful in my arms.  It was at that moment that my eyes begin to water.  I felt like you knew you were safe.   And I felt like you knew you were with your daddy and I knew you were my son.  And I knew that once someone feels safe with you, that you must be responsible so that they always feel that way.  I began to feel this surge within me out of nowhere, wanting you to be healthy and strong, wanting to make sure that I safely guided you to be someone that could handle this world that can be both terrifying and wondrous at the same time.  My head began to fill with dreams of what you would look like walking and talking, and questions you might ask, advice that I would give you, nursing tears and sharing joys.  That’s when you know you are in love, and that’s when I knew I was in love with you.

Dhyan_6monthBut time teaches you patience.  Perhaps that’s one advantage of having a 40 year old father.  As I process this past year I think about all the amazing moments I’ve been able to see.  These moments are small in comparison to what any human is capable of, but they remind me that in the process of growth even the most insignificant things can be great triumph because they happen along the way of great journeys.  And you have a great journey ahead of you.  I remember your first smile, the first time you opened your hands, your eyes following an object around the room for the first time, your first steps, your first crawl.  However, if I were to pick a favorite moment, when I think of your first year, is the first time you made vocalizations.  It happened one evening in between the age of 2 and 3 months.  It was like for the first time you wanted to greet the world.  It’s like you suddenly realized that you were no longer an extension of your mother, but you realized you were a separate individual entity and you wanted to announce your presence.  Or perhaps it was that for the first time you realized that the world wasn’t just happening to you, you could happen to the world and you were just glad to be alive. You made the cutest gurgling noises, and were smiling and waving your little arms about.  Your mother and I laid at your side on the bed and we just watched you.  It was the most entertaining and amazing thing I’ve ever seen and your mother and I were incurably happy next to you.  We would look at each other and just knew that as tiring as this might be some times it was also going to be incredibly rewarding and full of joy.  We knew what family meant, and we felt an incredible amount of love for you and each other.

Tomorrow you will be a year old.  You are now eagerly walking around and getting into all sorts of trouble.  You are curious and exploring and it reminds me how important the process of movement is to discovery.  In human history, the building of boats, cars, rockets, they all have allowed us to discover and learn more.  Now that you can move the rate in which you will discover grows exponentially and I find myself continually blown away at how quickly your strength, dexterity, and intelligence grows.  As I look back on the day I first fell in love with you I realize that my love was a beautiful house that is empty on the inside, and each day you fill that house with amazing memories.  That love is now a home, and we are happy there, and excited for all the new memories that will fill that home.  Sometimes I get really scared that something might happen to you, and that being in that home alone without you, with only those memories to look at, would be the saddest thing imaginable.  But I would not dishonor your joy by getting lost in those fears.  I keep in the back to keep you as safe as possible without taking away from your desire for self-determination and knowing that ultimately what we learn from risk and failure is as important as any other way there is to learn.

Dhyan_me_1year

My heart is full of love and excitement because as your development continues I can show my love for you in so many new ways and I am anxious for you to experience it.  I am also anxious to experience your love in new ways also.  Though my appearance may change little, make no mistake that we are growing together.  And as I sit here and write this I know one thing for certain.  There are no words to express how much of a gift you truly are to my soul.  It will take a lifetime together as father and son for those words to manifest and even then it will be in no language that can be spoken, but I guarantee that you will know it.

Love,

Your Father

Love Child

On By Swarn GillIn Parenting, Philosophy, Psychology4 Comments

After my son was born I suddenly realized how people could be baby crazy and wrote an apology to all those who I thought were insane.  🙂

In that same vein I would like to continue with this topic as I reflect upon the love I have for my son right now.

It’s insane.  The love is like no other.  It feels so strong that it’s like it could literally jump out of my chest and wrap itself

My son at 9 weeks
My son at 9 weeks

around my boy.  I am not going to say it’s better or worse, but it’s unique.  It’s like falling in love, but as I mentioned before, even when you fall in love it feels like it’s based on something in the other person that is describable, even though the love you feel is more than the sum of those tangible criteria.  This feeling is totally biological.  My son barely has a personality, has barely acknowledged my existence, knows nothing about me, and we can’t communicate, but my love grows each in every day.  So much so that it scares me.

I’ve always tried to understand the darker nature in ourselves and what I am feeling right now helps understand some behaviors better, while others I am even more clueless.  For instance I don’t understand how people can do unspeakable cruelty to their children; beat them, scream at them, shake them to death, forget about them.  I am not talking about parents who work very hard to try to provide for their kids and whose hearts are broken that they don’t get to spend more time with them.  But real abuse.  It feels as wrong to me as 2+2=5.  It’s just not an option.

On the other hand I get a glimpse into the type of parent who would do very irrational things to protect their children.  Or parents who would make their whole world revolve around their children to the point of their detriment.  I am not condoning these behaviors only that I see it.  It’s not an abstract thing to me anymore.  I can see how the intense love you feel would make you do some pretty stupid things.  As intense love is prone to do, for whomever you feel it for.  But it is still very different from that intense love and passion of romantic love.  Perhaps I lack some depth of feeling but there is something about falling in love with an adult that is different because the other person is an adult.  You have the feeling that they can take care of themselves, they have the ability to make their own decisions, and there is a certain understanding that you can’t control the other person (healthy love anyway, obviously many try to control their partners and this usually become dysfunctional quickly).  The helplessness and the innocence of a baby turns your love into such a fury of protection that it’s without measure.  As my love grows I get so scared about what would happen if I lost him.  I already have no idea how I’d emotionally deal with something so big.  I hope I never have to pass through such a trial because I am not sure I could carry the weight.  So I get it.  I see it as though I stand on the top of a hill and see how slippery the slope is to just doing stupid

Trying to convince my son to smile...he wasn't quite ready at 5 weeks. :)
Trying to convince my son to smile…he wasn’t quite ready at 5 weeks. 🙂

things out of love.  And whenever this happens I am thankful for it because I know I have increased my capacity for forgiveness.

And though I see such things I know that I am capable of keeping my sense of reason.  It is precisely because I love my son so much that I know that if I really want to give him the best opportunities in this world he needs to have a dad who maintains a measure of reason in the face of overwhelming emotion.  So I must continue to be vigilant and direct my love into ways that will strengthen him and not weaken him.